Beyond the bustling town of Koh Kong, off the coast of southern Cambodia, lie 45,000 hectares of mangrove forest. They're among the most pristine in Southeast Asia and, like others around the world, they're under threat.
Mangroves form a transition zone between land and sea. Like all transitional ecosystems, they are diverse. Mangrove foliage provides rich bird habitat. Fish, crabs and molluscs hide and breed in their dense, aerial root system, which is adapted to salty water.
As if these ecosystem services weren't enough, mangroves stabilise soil, moderate the force of wind and waves, recycle nutrients and sequester carbon.
Khmer Rouge
Ironically, Cambodian mangroves prospered under the Khmer Rouge, which preferred to herd its citizens into the middle of the country. With their downfall, and the emergence of a market economy in the 1990s, powerful entrepreneurs - with military or government links - began clearing the mangroves for shrimp farms and charcoal. Local middlemen joined in, along with inland Cambodians and foreign fishermen attracted to the region's rich mangroves.
Alarmed by resource decline - and encouraged by international NGOs - the Cambodian government began cracking down. Conservation and poverty reduction could both be promoted, the government reasoned, by empowering local communities. Commune elections were held for the first time in 2002, followed by a community fisheries law. For the first time, mangrove communities began managing their own resources.
Management committees
With help from the UN Development Program and Canada's International Development Research Center, Cambodia' Environment Ministry launched its Participatory Management of Coastal Resources Project in 1997. Community workshops were held on mangrove ecology and management.
In 2001, the first village management committees were formed within the boundaries of Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary, deep in Koh Kong's mangroves. Villages outside the sanctuary, around Chrouy Pros Bay, have been invited to participate, in order to reduce fishing conflicts.
Success
Community management has been a success. Villagers have protected local sea grass beds, which are linked to the mangrove ecosystem and add fish spawning habitat. In the mangroves themselves, community patrols do their best to control illegal cutting and fishing practices. Mangroves have been successfully regenerated.
On the down side, government support for enforcement is limited and inconsistent and, outside the confines of community areas, illegal practices continue, such as the use of "light" boats armed with powerful lamps that attract fish. Some fear that commercial dredging of the Koh Kong River - led by powerful Cambodian interests - will damage the mangroves.
As elsewhere in the world, mangrove villagers and their international supporters realize that tourism may be the greatest force for mangrove protection. At least one villager in the area is planning an ecotourism initiative.
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Thursday, June 05, 2008
Managing Cambodia's mangroves
Cambodia to establish law for marriage with foreigners
PHNOM PENH, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will establish a law to allow Cambodian citizens to marry foreigners, Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng said here Thursday on the sideline of the Cambodia-U.S. cooperation meeting on combating human trafficking.
"Tomorrow, I will preside over a meeting for organizing the draft sub-decree to allow Cambodian people to marry foreigners," he told a press conference held after the meeting.
Recently, Cambodia halted to approve marriage between Cambodians and foreigners because it involved human trafficking, he said.
"We knew it contradicted our constitution and also discriminated individual rights, so we decided to establish law to facilitate marriage with foreigners, " he said.
The draft sub-decree would exclusively focus on marriage between Khmers and foreigners, he added.
Earlier this year, the International Organization for Migration issued a report stressing the vulnerability of Cambodian brides flocking to South Korea in increasing numbers.
The government in response condemned marriage brokerage agencies for exploitation and human trafficking, ordered the closure of three South Korean ones, and banned all marriages with foreigners on March 29, pending new legislation to regulate the process.
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Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Largest Cambodian Buddha resurrected in Siem Reap
PHNOM PENH, June 4 (Xinhua) -- The largest reclining Buddha in Cambodia, part of the Baphuon Temple at Angkor in Siem Reap province, has just opened to the public, the Mekong Times newspaper said Wednesday.
The Buddha is a 16th century addition to the west face of the 11th century Hindu Baphuon temple, the newspaper said, adding that it marks a religious schism between the Brahmanic Angkor society and the Buddhist culture that arose later.
The Buddha is one of the final stages of the reconstruction of the temple, with the three tiered monument slated to be fully open to the public by the end of 2009.
The restoration of the temple has been an epic journey, begun by the well-known French organization Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO) before the civil war in 1970. The project was interrupted by the war and resumed by the EFEO in 1995.
The Reclining Buddha, a representation of the Buddha after attaining enlightenment, is 70 meters long and 12 meters high. The French have undertaken nine years of "complex work" on the statue, which is one of the "most astonishing" archeological remains of the post-Angkorian period, according to a French Embassy press release.
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Airlines reduce flights to Cambodia as off season comes
PHNOM PENH, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Airlines are beginning their annual reduction of flights into Cambodia as the off season of tourism has started, the Cambodian Daily reported Wednesday.
As of June 1, Bangkok Airways has temporarily canceled its twice-weekly flights from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, which will not reopen until October.
Meanwhile, the airline will remain its five-to-six daily flights from Bangkok to Siem Reap, the English-Khmer language newspaper quoted company source as saying.
Last month, Vietnam Airlines canceled 110 flights into Siem Reap, which is the hottest sight-seeing spot of Cambodia.
Also in May, Eva Air cut off 13 flights into Cambodia.
Every year, airlines scale back flights to Cambodia when the rainy season begins and tourism slows, the paper quoted airport official as saying.
Tourism is one of the kingdom's foremost pillar industries. In 2007, it received some 2 million foreign tourist arrivals.
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Cambodian prostitutes protest police crackdown
By SOPHENG CHEANG
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — About 200 Cambodian prostitutes protested peacefully Wednesday against a police crackdown and claimed to have been physically and sexually abused in custody.
The prostitutes staged a protest in the capital, Phnom Penh, to complain that they had been unlawfully detained and to highlight the behavior of guards at the rehabilitation center where they were held.
"Some of them (the sex workers) were beaten and gang raped by the center guards, and most of the time they did not use condoms," said Chan Dina, a 31-year-old prostitute and member of the Cambodian Prostitute Union, a sex workers' advocacy group.
Police began rounding up male and female sex workers from brothels, bars and parks in March, detaining them for a week to 10 days at the Prey Speu rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Cambodian law does not explicitly define prostitution as illegal, but commercial sex is frowned upon by authorities who routinely launch sweeps to clean up the streets.
"Sex workers are human beings and we have equal rights" and deserve protection from abuse, Chan Dina said.
"We do not think that sex work is wrong. It is just a means to an end," said Pich Sokchea, a 42-year-old transvestite sex worker with the Women's Network for Unity, another prostitutes' advocacy group.
Pich Sokchea urged the government to end the crackdown because it was affecting the livelihood of sex workers, many of whom were forced into the profession by poverty and debts. "We are people who sacrifice everything for the sake of our families and for our livelihood."
It was unclear what prompted the latest crackdown but some activists said an anti-trafficking law approved in March may have caused authorities to take a tougher stand against prostitution.
Police Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, dismissed claims that police committed violence against sex workers and said none was mistreated in the crackdown.
He defended the crackdown, calling sex work unacceptable in Cambodia.
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Cambodian PM promises non-political career for oldest son
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Senhas said that his oldest son Hun Manet will not enter politics, the English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodian Daily reported Tuesday.
"In the future, I don't allow him to replace me as prime minister. I want him to do some charity work for his parents," Hunwas quoted as saying on Monday.
Hun denied a rumor that claimed his son would stand as a lawmaker candidate in Siem Reap province in the general election in July.
"I don't allow my son to be a lawmaker while I am a father in power," he said, adding that supporters have asked him to place his children in positions of power as his successors.
"We can't do that. It is a democracy. The children can't inherit (power)," he said.
Hun Manet is the star among Hun Sen's children. He graduated from the West Point Military Academy in the United States, later returned to Cambodia and conducted some charity work.
Hun Sen himself has been premier in the previous three governments of the kingdom from 1993 until now. His major-ruling Cambodian People's Party is now preparing to score a landslide victory in the upcoming general election and he is the sole party candidate for premiership.
Source:Xinhua
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Sunday, June 01, 2008
West teacher helps kids capture life through lens
AURORA -- Washington Middle School art teacher Somphonh "Samantha" Oulavong used to spend her vacations vacationing -- until she realized she would rather spend them teaching.
The spring breaks and summers when Oulavong once traveled in the south of France now find her in developing countries helping children and teens learn to photograph the world around them.
"A lot of these kids will never ever have a chance to hold a camera ever in their lifetime," said Oulavong, who will travel to Nicaragua and Cambodia this summer.
In Cambodia she plans to spend six weeks in Phnom Penh working with students ages 10 to 14 whose parents have HIV or whose lives have otherwise been affected by the virus.
It will not be her first encounter with children who face tragedy. Oulavong spent her spring break teaching photography to nine impoverished Nicaraguan children and teens in Managua.
She said one student, who worked at a local landfill, was "only 16 years old, but when you look at him he looks like he was in his late 30s." Another student, a 14-year-old, walked two miles to attend her photography workshop, she said.
Those students' pictures, along with Oulavong's photographs of them, will be exhibited this summer in Nicaragua, where she will visit before traveling to Cambodia.
Oulavong is in the process of forming a non-profit organization, Lens of Vision & Expression (LOVE), to support her work. She hopes the group will partner with other non-profit organizations that work with teens and children in order to bring photography workshops to the youth.
Oulavong knows film and a camera will not solve all the problems of an impoverished teen boy or the daughter of a parent living with HIV. But, she said, "when you give a child an opportunity to play and to use their imagination in a creative way, it allows them to have dreams and have hopes and to have a vision."
She is not just speculating. As a young child, Oulavong, whose parents are Chinese and who was born in Laos, lived in refugee camps in Thailand before the family moved to the United States.
"I remember having foreigners helping us out," she said. "I wanted to do something like that, to give somebody some sense of comfort, just let them know that there is help, there is hope."
ANALYSIS: Hun Sen clings to stranglehold on Cambodia
CRUDE: The former member of the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge is promising the country boundless riches thanks to offshore oil discovered by an ultra-capitalist US company
Although 11 parties are geared to fight it out in Cambodia's upcoming national elections, the contest is all but certain to be a one-horse race.
No one seems to have any doubt that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who at age 57 is Asia’s longest-serving head of government, will retain his stranglehold over the country’s politics. Least of all himself.
“I wish to state it very clearly this way: No one can defeat Hun Sen. Only Hun Sen alone can defeat Hun Sen,” he said in a speech earlier this year.
Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party began almost three decades ago as a communist party that headed a single-party state. But as Cambodia changed into a multiparty democracy, so did the party evolve, and proved itself the master of the field.
Today Hun Sen — once a member of the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge — is crowing that he will bring the country boundless riches thanks to offshore oil discovered by an ultra-capitalist US oil company, Chevron.
In an hour-long speech at a recent development conference, he unequivocally told the audience he’ll remain in power long enough to manage the expected windfall from the black gold, sometime in the next decade.
He spoke as if he had already won a new five-year term in office, though balloting won’t be held until July 27. More than 8 million of Cambodia’s 14 million people are eligible to vote, according to the elections committee.
An oil bonanza would further bolster Hun Sen’s already unchallenged stature at the expense of the country’s democratic freedoms, analysts say.
Once oil production starts, Hun Sen will find it easier to ignore the pressures to liberalize from foreign aid donors — on which the country is now still heavily reliant — and will instead curb freedom of expression, assembly and the press, said Lao Mong Hay, a senior researcher at the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.
Elections have become a “veneer of democracy,” he said, adding that Hun Sen’s expected victory would further empower “the present oligarchy composed of people in power and tycoons.”
Through guile and threat, Hun Sen has run Cambodia since 1985, when he became prime minister of a Vietnamese-installed communist government.
A peasant’s son, he has intimidated, outsmarted and co-opted his rivals, including those who have spent decades being versed in Western education and democracy.
Hun Sen has also presided over the fast growth of the economy, which remains small by international standards. His party has just three credible rivals, one named after and led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy.
The two other main parties are led by Kem Sokha, a former human rights activist, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, whose former party booted him out for alleged incompetence — in part because of some political shenanigans orchestrated by Hun Sen’s side.
But because the three parties lack a united strategy and instead pursue their own separate agendas for votes, they are unlikely to loosen the grip of Hun Sen’s party, said Kuol Panha, director of Comfrel, an independent Cambodian election monitoring group.
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Vietnam, Cambodia push for mapping of land borderline
VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam and its neighbour, Cambodia , have vowed to complete the mapping of their shared land borderline within this year as set forth by the joint committee for land border demarcation.
The pledge was made at the sixth meeting of the two countries’ joint technical sub-committee for land border demarcation that took place in Phnom Penh from May 26 to 31.
Nguyen Hong Thao, Vice Chairman of Vietnam’s National Border Committee and standing member of the Vietnam-Cambodia Joint Committee for Border Demarcation headed the Vietnamese delegation to the meeting.
The Cambodian officials were led by Huon Savang, Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the national taskforce on border issues of the Ministers’ Council Office.
Vietnamese and Cambodian officials agreed on some important principles for the mapping of the shared borderline to serve the demarcation and planting of border marks at their border gates.
The officials agreed that the planting of border marks will be soon carried out at the Le Thanh-O Giadao border gates in Vietnam ’s Gia Lai province and Cambodia ’s Rattanakiri, and at the Tinh Bien-Phmon Don border gates shared by An Giang province and Ta Keo province.
They were unanimous that the joint teams for border demarcation and marker planting will continue doing their work at the borderline shared by Kien Giang and Kampot, An Giang and Kandal, Long An and Svay Rieng, and Tay Ninh and Kompong Cham and Svey Rieng provinces.
At the end of the meeting, Vietnamese and Cambodian officials signed a working minutes on the achieved outcomes.
While in Cambodia for the meeting, the Vietnamese officials were received by Senior Minister Var Kim Hong, president of Cambodia ’s national border committee and co-chair of the Cambodia-Vietnam Joint Committee for Border Demarcation.
(Source: VNA)
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Vietnam: A country of heroes, not a war
Is it really the land of heroes or cowards and thefts? Yuon is the brutal nation.
In Vietnam, people like to recite a modern slogan: "Vietnam is a country, not a war." That, in essence, is what visitors to this beautiful yet troubled land will find, a country in which was plays a critical part of history but also hides a rich, complex culture.
A coastal country of idyllic lined with palm tress, tranquil bays dotted with the sails of junks and sampans, lush green valley, Vietnam’s natural landscape is complemented by a traditional rural life, embodied in the villagers tilling the patch work paddy fields and children riding their water buffaloes home from the fields at the end of the day.
A traditional culture survives after lying dormant for several years but today it is threatened by the encroachment of modern life. Everywhere, there is the hum of activity, of a hardworking people anxious to build their country and improve their own well being.
This all presents quandary for Vietnam today.
Vietnam is a land of heroes. Thus, Vietnamese people had fought many wars with superpowers. After fighting off foreign invaders and colonists for centuries, Vietnam now must cope with a new kind of invasions, one of capital, of technology and of ideas.
The year of battle have left Vietnamese with an inmate pride in the fact that this impoverished land was able to topple great powers and their superior technology with only their wits, perseverance and sheet guts.
In 1990 Vietnam adopted a new course in foreign affairs and mended fences with Beijing. Thus, European and Asian companies poured into Vietnam seeking investment opportunities.
As this scribe was in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam last week in the course coming back home after attending the international conference of journalists in Phnom Penh of Cambodia where 86 media-associated people from 54 various countries had participated in.
All the people attended at the international conference were given opportunity to explore and experience the various culturally rich to tourism-view point important places, politically hot to economically brighten places, socially to historically remarkable spots Phnom Penh and around Cambodia.
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City quickly became boomtowns. Thus, with anticipation of prosperity, the Vietnamese have summoned their inherent national determination and have set an autonomous course for the 21st century.
Vietnam is a home to 53 ethnic minorities and people are very friendly, polite, hospitable and helpful. People in north are generally more reserved and have had less exposure to Westerners than those in the south.
Caution should be taken while eating. Generally visitors should find restaurants where people are crowd. Eat in restaurants that are crowded. If a place is crowded, it is good sign that the establishment is not serving spoiled food.
Food sits at the very epicenter of Vietnamese culture: in every significant holiday on the Vietnamese cultural calendar, all the important milestones in a Vietnamese person’s life, and indeed, most of the important day-to-day social events and interactions, food plays a central role.
The most famous example of Vietnamese cuisine is pho—pho ga (chicken noodle soup) or pho bo (beef noodle soup).
A local delicacy in the Hanoi area is dog meat, which is especially popular in the winter. There are a number of restaurants along the Red River that specialize in it.
There are thousands of restaurants in Hanoi catering to everyone’s taste. Go easy on the really exotic foods until your digestive system has had some time to adjust.
Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Hai Phong cities are the main cities of the Vietnam. And most of historically culturally important artifacts, buildings, and museums are situated in these there cuties.
Located in northern Vietnam on the right bank of the Red River, summers are hot, humid and often rainy, while winters are relatively cool and dry in Hanoi.
Vietnam is still a socialist country, but you’ll find that Hanoians, like many Vietnamese, have embraced capitalism with gusto.
Hanoi has been capital of Vietnam for nearly a thousand years, during which the city has endured numerous invasions, occupations, restorations and name changes. The Chinese ruled Hanoi and much of Vietnam off and on for centuries, until a Vietnamese general named Le Loi finally secured the nation’s independence in 1428. It wasn’t until 1831 that the Nguyen Dynasty renamed the city Ha Noi, which can be translated as Between Rivers or River Interior.
Vietnam’s independence ended in the mid-1800s, when the country was colonized by the French.
Hanoi became the capital of Vietnam when North and South Vietnam were formally reunited on July 2, 1976.
It is said that Hanoi is the cultural center of Vietnam. Despite the battles that have raged around it, Hanoi retains much of its historic charm. Hanoi boasts more cultural sites than any city in Vietnam, including over 600 pagodas and temples and some delightful French colonial buildings.
Among them are The Old Quarter which is the cultural essence of Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh Museum, Ho Chi Minh’s residence, One-Pillar Pagoda, The Temple of Literature, Hoa Lo Prison ("The Hanoi Hilton").
Having of many scenic lakes Hanoi is sometimes called "City of Lakes."
Remarkably, the capital of Vietnam Hanoi is a fascinating blend of East and West, with a mix of Chinese and French influences enriching the vibrant Vietnamese culture. Largely unspoiled by modern development, Hanoi city of Vietnam is a rising star in Southeast Asia and has much to offer the tourists.
Only some years before Vietnam emerged from years of international isolation by opening its door to outside investors. The streets of capital, Hanoi, and the largest Vietnamese city Ho Chi Minh city bustle with enthusiasm and business energy. It is said that Vietnamese work and aim for the future like they drive. The streets pulsate with a sense that every one is on hurry, honking, pushing forward and rarely stopping for much of anything. Everyone’s eager to move ahead to the next intersection. Driving in Vietnam, say some, is a lot like doing business. Don’t go in wearing a blindfold.
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Hun Sen eyes extension of long-running rule in Cambodia with opposition divided
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Although 11 parties are geared to fight it out in Cambodia's upcoming national elections, the contest is all but certain to be a one-horse race.
No one seems to have any doubt that Prime Minister Hun Sen, who at age 57 is Asia's longest-serving head of government, will retain his stranglehold over the country's politics. Least of all himself.
"I wish to state it very clearly this way: No one can defeat Hun Sen. Only Hun Sen alone can defeat Hun Sen," he said in a speech earlier this year.
Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party began almost three decades ago as a communist party that headed a single-party state. But as Cambodia changed into a multiparty democracy, so did the party evolve, and proved itself the master of the field.
Today Hun Sen — once a member of the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge — is crowing that he will bring the country boundless riches thanks to offshore oil discovered by an ultra-capitalist American oil company, Chevron.
In an hour-long speech at a recent development conference, he unequivocally told the audience he'll remain in power long enough to manage the expected windfall from the black gold, sometime in the next decade.
He spoke as if he had already won a new five-year term in office, though balloting won't be held until July 27. More than 8 million out of Cambodia's 14 million people are eligible to vote, according the elections committee.
An oil bonanza would further bolster Hun Sen's already unchallenged stature at the expense of the country's democratic freedoms, analysts say.
Once oil production starts, Hun Sen will find it easier to ignore the pressures to liberalize from foreign aid donors — on which the country is now still heavily reliant — and will instead curb freedom of expression, assembly and the press, said Lao Mong Hay, a senior researcher at the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.
Elections have become a "veneer of democracy," he said, adding that Hun Sen's expected victory would further empower "the present oligarchy composed of people in power and tycoons."
Through guile and threat, Hun Sen has run Cambodia since 1985, when he became prime minister of a Vietnamese-installed communist government.
A peasant's son, he has intimidated, outsmarted and co-opted his rivals, including those who have spent decades being versed in Western education and democracy.
For years, Cambodia was wracked by civil war between the government and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, whose 1975-79 "killing fields" regime left some 1.7 million Cambodians dead.
A U.N.-sponsored peace process led to 1993 elections that Hun Sen's party lost — but he managed to muscle his way into the government anyway as co-prime minister.
Less than four years later, he ousted his coalition partner when their rivalry turned violent and his forces emerged victorious after a few days of bloody fighting in and around the capital. His party easily won elections in 1998 over a divided opposition and hasn't lost a poll since. It now holds 73 of the 123 seats in the lower house of parliament.
Hun Sen has also presided over the fast growth of the economy, which remains small by international standards.
Having run the country for three decades, his party has built a firm grass-roots apparatus and can draw on financial wealth unmatched by its opponents. Supporters include some of the country's wealthiest tycoons, who regularly dole out cash to finance rural projects such as schools and roads, often named after Hun Sen.
The party has just three credible rivals, one named after and led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy.
The two other main parties are led by Kem Sokha, a former human rights activist, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, whose former party booted him out for alleged incompetence — in part because of some political shenanigans orchestrated by Hun Sen's side.
But because the three parties lack a united strategy and instead pursue their own separate agendas for votes, they are unlikely to loosen the grip of Hun Sen's party, said Kuol Panha, director of Comfrel, an independent Cambodian election monitoring group.
"The imbalance will weigh heavier toward the ruling party. It can prevail at whim with its great strength due to the divided voices among the non-ruling parties," he said.
He said Cambodia's electoral environment is still far from free and fair, with the ruling party enjoying unfettered access to state resources and the tightly controlled broadcast media.
During the past few months, TV and radio stations have flooded the airwaves with coverage of Hun Sen and party colleagues inaugurating rural roads, schools and Buddhist pagodas — financed by cronies — and welcoming deserters from the Sam Rainsy Party.
Sam Rainsy acknowledges that Hun Sen's advantage of controlling the levers of state power make it "very difficult" for opposition parties.
"There's no strong kid on the block," to challenge Hun Sen's grip, said Chea Vannath, an independent analyst and former director of the Center for Social Development, a nonprofit social study group.
"I'm sure the ruling party will stay in power for quite awhile — with or without the oil money," she said.
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Saturday, May 31, 2008
Retired Marine guilty of 'sex tourism'
A retired Marine Corps captain was found guilty by a federal jury in Los Angeles on Thursday of traveling to Cambodia to engage in sex with children.
Michael Joseph Pepe, 54, was convicted of violating the federal Protect Act, which strengthened laws against predatory crimes involving children outside the United States.
Pepe was accused of drugging, raping and beating seven Cambodian girls ages 9 to 12. Six of the girls flew to the U.S. and testified during the three-week trial in front of U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer.
Several of the victims testified that Pepe required them to give him sexual massages and to perform oral sex on him on a daily basis, according to a news release by the U.S. attorney's office.
Prosecutors also presented evidence seized by Cambodian police during a search of Pepe's residence in Phnom Penh.
Pepe is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 3.
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Friday, May 30, 2008
Former Khmer Rouge hail Pailin SEZ
A signboard went up in mid-May on the outskirts of the partially cleared Pailin SEZ, which at 2,000 hectares dwarfs similar zones designed to lure foreign investment in neighboring provinces.
Thai firms are eager to set up at the Pailin zone, about 15 kilometers inland from the border town in Steung Kach commune, Salakrao district, according to Pailin Municipality deputy governor Ich Sarou.
Sarou said he and other local officials have met several times in recent months with a group of about 50 Thai businessmen who are cooperating to open a biodiesel production plant as well as garment and electronics factories at the zone.
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"They wanted to launch their operations two months ago by sending machinery in to clear land but we refused their request because it's a big investment worth more than $2 million, which means they have to get permission from the CDC (Council for the Development of Cambodia)," Sarou said.
Keut Sothea, another deputy governor of Pailin Municipality and a former Khmer Rouge commander, said the special economic zone will go a long way to improving the lives of the region's ex-rebels.
"It will encourage investors to open factories here and will provide work for our former Khmer Rouge soldiers and other people," Sothea said, adding that the jungle from which the zone is currently being created used to be "a hot battlefield for the Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese soldiers and government forces."
"Before, we used to shoot and shell each other there; now we are fighting to make business and a profit," he said.
"It is good news and it shows that Cambodia is completely peaceful.... We are forgetting the past and turning the land into a developed area for people's wellbeing," he added.
Sarou said the SEZ had been in the pipeline for several years and was part of a plan outlined by Prime Minister Hun Sen to establish five special economic zones in Pailin and Banteay Meanchey, Koh Kong, Kandal and Svay Rieng provinces. It is hoped the zones will lure foreign investors through tax breaks and the prospect of cheap Cambodian labor.
"We hope companies and factories will invest here next year," Sarou told the Post in Pailin. "We have a lot of land for their investments."
However, the deputy secretary general of the CDC's Special Economic Zone Board, Chea Vuthy, said on May 20 he had not received any requests from businesses seeking to start operations at the Pailin SEZ.
He also said that while the CDC welcomed foreign investment in the area, the council had not received a request for the Pailin zone to be formed.
"The special economic zone in Pailin has not been officially requested and registered. They (Pailin Municipality officials) should request approval for it from the CDC," he said, indicating that its approval was a mere formality.
Former Khmer Rouge soldiers in the area contacted by the Post welcomed news that work was progressing on the Pailin SEZ. "I am very happy to hear this special economic zone is being created here. I hope it will help many Cambodian people find work and stop them from having to go to Thailand," said Soeun Say, a farmer who was previously a fighter for the hardline communist movement.
"We need investors to come here - we have a lot of land to produce crops for factories," he said.
Lath Nhoung, another former Khmer Rouge soldier, said the SEZ would benefit the agricultural sector as well as provide industrial jobs.
"When we have more factories we are encouraged to farm because it means we have a market for our crops," he said.
US donates military trucks to Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The United States will deliver 31 used trucks to Cambodia, its first direct supply of military hardware there since Washington lifted an embargo three years ago.
The U.S. Embassy said Friday that the 31 GMC cargo trucks — part of a group of 60 the U.S. military has agreed to give to Cambodia — will be handed over at a ceremony Monday.
The U.S. halted military assistance to Cambodia following a 1997 coup in which Hun Sen grabbed full power after ousting his co-premier, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Hun Sen remains prime minister.
In August 2005, President Bush waived the ban, citing Phnom Penh's agreement to exempt Americans in Cambodia from prosecution by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court.
Since direct military ties between the two countries were restored in 2006, the U.S. has pledged nearly $3.2 million in military aid to Cambodia, the embassy said in a statement.
It said the 31 trucks are "the first deliverables" under a U.S. program for "assisting Cambodia in its efforts to improve" its border security, mobility and peacekeeping operations.
It added that the U.S. military is spending $413,000 on processing, packaging and shipping all 60 vehicles — "excess defense articles no longer needed by the U.S. armed forces."
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Cambodia to send 139 mine sweeping soldiers to Sudan under UN mission
PHNOM PENH, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will send 139 soldiers to clean mines in Sudan under the UN mission, Cambodian National Defense Minister Tea Banh announced here on Friday.
"We will send 15 of them firstly on June 2 and the rest on June10 according to the schedule," Tea Banh told the national conference of the government's rectangular policy.
"Our K-315 group will return from Sudan on June 8," he said, adding that the new group of soldiers will replace them.
Cambodia has already sent two groups of mine sweeping soldiers to Sudan under UN humanitarian mission and each group had over 130soldiers, he said.
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For investors, Cambodia could be the next Vietnam
"Eventually, Vietnam worked out well," Marc Faber, a fund manager and investment adviser known for his "Gloom, Boom, & Doom Report," said by telephone from Switzerland. "I think the same may happen to Cambodia."
Faber, who is on the boards of two of the new private equity firms in Cambodia - Frontier Investment & Development Partners and Leopard Capital - is not the only one who thinks so.
Jim Rogers, a commodities specialist who founded the profitable Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1970s, and Robert Ash, former chief executive of AIG Asset Management Services, are also on the board of Frontier.
Heinrich Looser, the retired chief of private banking at Bank Julius Baer in Zurich, and Jim Walker, a former director and chief economist of CLSA Securities, are on the Leopard board as well.
The surge in interest is part of a general turn toward so-called frontier markets as investors seek shelter from the global credit crisis and diminishing returns in developed markets. It is also one more sign that aid-dependent Cambodia, with a gross domestic product of just $8.4 billion last year, could finally be inching out of the shadow of its chaotic past.
For many in the West, Cambodia remains tainted by the communist crackdown after the end of the Indochina wars. Yet China, South Korea and Malaysia have been pouring in investment. In 2006, foreign direct investment totaled $2.6 billion, up from just $340 million in 2004, according to the International Monetary Fund.
A rising segment of Cambodians - a third of whom still live on the equivalent of less than $1 a day - are snapping up Honda Dream motorbikes and KFC chicken drumsticks. Cambodia, which plans to open stock and bond exchanges next year, also has the potential to produce two things the world now craves: more rice and oil.
But take a drive out of the capital, Phnom Penh, where the first skyscrapers are rising in the country, and you return quickly to a landscape of water buffalo and thatch huts, governed by the rhythm of the rains.
That looks like opportunity to Marvin Yeo, who recently quit as a syndicate manager at the Asian Development Bank to co-found Frontier, which manages the Cambodia Investment and Development Fund, with a Singaporean economist, Kim Song Tan. They hope to raise $250 million by the end of the year.
Cambodia, Yeo said, "is where Vietnam was some 8 to 10 years ago." He likes a lot about Cambodia: its location in a fast-growing region, a young and inexpensive work force, rising productivity, a pro-business government, stable politics and strong GDP growth, which peaked at 13.5 percent in 2005 but was expected to mellow to 7 percent or 8 percent in coming years.
Thirty years of an isolating war, he added, have made Cambodia "one of the best investor diversification plays around."
But as Han Kyung Tae, the chief Cambodia representative of Tong Yang Investment, part of the South Korean Tong Yang Group, points out, promise and pretty macroeconomics are one thing; closing good deals on the ground are quite another.
Han has been trying to start an Indochina investment fund for more than a year. He said he had reviewed 30 to 40 business plans, but had yet to close a single deal. Tong Yang has scaled back its venture capital aspirations and now hopes to invest $25 million in a Cambodian information technology company, as part of a Vietnam-Cambodia fund, Han said.
His search, he said, was complicated by lack of transparency in a business culture built around sealed family empires. "It's hard for us to get the information we need to invest," Han said. "It's totally new to them. Some feel offended if I ask for financial information."
Investors also say that the weak legal system, immature accounting standards and corruption in Cambodia remain challenges. An anti-corruption law has been foundering for more than a decade, and Cambodia ranks near the bottom of Transparency International's corruption perceptions index.
Kathleen Ng, the managing director of the Center for Asia Private Equity Research, which is based in Hong Kong, sees private equity interest in Cambodia as largely "spillover" from a still-emerging Vietnam.
A second wave of private equity investment in Vietnam - the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998 obliterated the first - began to crest in 2006, rising to $2.0 billion in 2007, up from $166.5 million in 2005, according to the center.
The Ho Chi Minh stock exchange opened in 2000, and despite some recent trouble with expensive initial public offerings is beginning to build a track record of profitable exits, Ng said.
In December 2007, Vietnam Manufacturing & Export Processing Holdings became the first company based in Vietnam to be listed on the Hong Kong exchange; Merrill Lynch invested $22 million and realized $13.06 million through the sale of a third of its holdings, according to the private equity center.
Texas Pacific Group and Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel, together invested $36.5 million in the Vietnamese Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technologies. Two months after it went public, Texas Pacific, which invested $21.5 million, sold less than a quarter of its holdings, booking a cash return of $22.17 million, according to the center.
"There's a level of confidence but Vietnam still needs to prove itself," Ng said. "You cannot just use a few divestment results to say, 'Hey, a place is doing well."'
She added that it might be too early yet for thriving private-sector equity investment in Cambodia, but that the country was ripe for development-finance institutions.
Proparco, the financing subsidiary of the French Development Agency, is "studying the possibility" of investing $5 million to $15 million in a Cambodia-focused private equity fund, according to Julien Kinic, an investment officer at Proparco. The French firm is already a shareholder in Dragon Capital, a Vietnamese asset management group, and has provided direct financing to several prominent Cambodian businesses, Kinic said. "Our interest in Cambodia is not new," he said. "What is new is the rising of the economy and the strong need for financing."
Douglas Clayton, who founded Leopard Capital last year, said that Leopard's Cambodia Fund had raised $10 million of its $100 million target since its inception in April, mostly from wealthy individuals and private banking institutions. He expects to close on Leopard's first project, a 250-unit condo project in the Cambodian tourist hub of Siem Reap, in the next few weeks.
"Cambodia needs several billion dollars of investment," said Clayton, who used to head the Thailand office of CLSA Securities. "Part of that can be private equity. The challenge will be to build the businesses. Most are early-stage investments. This is building basic industries and services."
Cambodia Emerald, which split off from Leopard in November, also aims to raise $100 million, said Peter Brimble, who directs Emerald with Bradley Gordon, a former corporate lawyer.
The funds are targeting investment in tourism, agribusiness, infrastructure, real estate, manufacturing and financial services, among other sectors.
Of course, what goes up can come tumbling down. Take Vietnam: After rising 500-fold from 2003 through the end of 2007, its stock market fell by nearly half in the first quarter.
Cham Prasidh, Cambodia's minister of commerce, said he was not worried about wading into the increasingly foreboding tides of global capital markets.
"Even if there is a world recession, if you develop the capacity to create an enabling environment for doing business and investment in Cambodia, you will survive," he said.
Besides, he added, Cambodia is ready to ride the waves: "We're surfers."
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
Observers laud cluster bomb ban but questions remain
DUBLIN - A LANDMARK agreement on a treaty to ban cluster bombs was welcomed by politicians and campaigners on Thursday but some questioned how effective it can be without backing from key powers like the US and China.
After 10 days of painstaking negotiations at Croke Park stadium in Dublin, diplomats agreed on Wednesday the wording of a pact to outlaw the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who agreed to scrap cluster bombs shortly before the agreement was reached, said the treaty, due to be signed in Oslo in December, would be 'a major breakthrough'.
The agreement was reached by delegates from 111 countries but there are several notable absentees from the list of supporters.
Agreement merely a step forward
'We must be clear about the fact that this agreement will be merely a step forward; it must not be regarded as the final destination,' Britain's Independent newspaper said in an editorial.
'The most glaring problem is that the United States, China, Russia, Pakistan, India and Israel have not signed the treaty.
'If the largest militaries on the planet refuse to curb their stockpiles of these weapons, what real good can it do?' Cluster munitions are among the weapons posing the gravest dangers to civilians, especially in heavily bombed countries like Laos, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, they explode in mid-air, randomly scattering bomblets. Countries are seeking a ban due to the risk of civilians being killed or maimed by their indiscriminate, wide area effect.
They also pose a lasting threat to civilians as many bomblets fail to explode on impact.
The treaty requires the destruction of stockpiled munitions within eight years - though it leaves the door open for future, more precise generations of cluster munitions that pose less harm to civilians.
Britain is set to ask the US to remove cluster bombs stockpiled at its military bases on its territory in the wake of the agreement, the Guardian newspaper reported.
The treaty was welcomed by the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), an umbrella group of non-governmental organisations, which hopes it will stigmatise cluster munitions, as the similar Ottawa Treaty did for landmines.
CMC co-chair Simon Conway said the treaty was a compromise but nonetheless 'incredibly strong'.
'We're going to end up with a strong treaty that prohibits every cluster bomb that's ever been used, with no transition periods, with strong obligations on clearance and particularly strong obligations on victim assistance,' he said.
Hildegarde Vansintjan, advocacy officer for disability campaigners Handicap International, said the convention made states responsible for providing assistance to cluster bomb victims.
The treaty 'would be a real step forward for the people suffering from cluster munitions all over the world,' she told AFP.
The cluster munitions ban process, started by Norway in February 2007, took the same path as the 1997 Ottawa Treaty by going outside the United Nations to avoid vetoes and seal a swift pact. --AFP
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China presence in Cambodia grows
PHNOM PENH - China, hungry for strategic influence and natural resources, is asserting itself as a major investor in Cambodia, sparking concerns that a huge inflow of Chinese cash will fuel existing corruption and exploitation in one of the world's poorest countries.
The relationship between the two countries is long and mixed, given Maoist China's unflagging support for the late supreme Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, whose Marxist faction is blamed for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians from 1975-79.
But in recent years, ethnic Chinese families close to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen have played a key role in putting Chinese companies, often with the backing of the Chinese state, in touch with top Cambodian officials, economists and activists said.
"China needs Cambodia," US-based Cambodian economist Tith Naranhkiri said. "If a security problem occurs, for example, a war with Taiwan, China may need Cambodia ... Secondly, for economic reasons, it needs gas and oil."
According to the official China News Agency, China has become one of the biggest investors in Cambodia, with 3,016 Chinese companies making cumulative investments of US$1.58 billion to the end of 2007. Bilateral trade last year rose by 30% from 2006, to $730 million.
Since the signing of an investment protection agreement in July 1996, a further $350 million has been pledged, mostly in the forestry sector, power, textiles, construction materials, and agricultural development.
Major role for China
"China now plays a crucial role in our economy. It is both an important donor and an investor, and it's also a big market for Cambodian products," Khmer Economists' Association president Chan Sophal said. "Our agricultural products are exported to China but through Thailand and Vietnam. We are also a market for Chinese products. China’s role in the Cambodian economy is growing," he said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited Cambodia in February, pledging a further $55 million in aid and investments of $1 billion in the country's power industry. He also waived import tariffs on 400 Cambodian products.
Besides investment and assistance, China has also granted military assistance to Cambodia, providing the country’s dilapidated navy with nine patrol boats in November 2007 and five warships in 2005.
But rights activists and anti-corruption campaigners point to a huge increase in illegal logging, land-grabbing, and worker exploitation as a secondary consequence of Chinese money.
"The effect of lots of money coming in with few strings attached, going to a lot of people in the government, is generally exacerbating corruption," Simon Taylor, director of the international anti-corruption group Global Witness, said.
Land grabs, illegal logging
"This manifests itself as land-grabbing, massive plantations and illegal logging, unregulated mining, the building of dams, and so on," Taylor said.
Meanwhile, workers' rights are often sidestepped in Chinese-invested factories, especially in the textile industry, activists said.
"The Chinese companies, especially garment factories, today have a lot of problems with Cambodian workers," Chan Saveth, of the rights advocacy group Adhoc, said. "Today, we see that China dominates garment factories in Cambodia. Workers suffer a lot, and the Chinese garment factories have mostly restricted workers' freedom."
Hundreds of thousands of workers - the majority of whom are women - are employed in Cambodia’s textile industry, which generates annual revenue of more than US$1 billion.
They have described an atmosphere in which they are constantly pressed into unpaid overtime, with too many financial worries and too little spare time to cause trouble for management. Unauthorized deductions from pay-packets are common, and paid sick leave is rare.
Protests in the forest
Chinese money has been tied up with massive agricultural and forestry exploitation projects, which are destroying traditional ways of life such as bamboo-harvesting and resin-tapping, activists said.
The Cambodian government granted a Mondulkiri forest concession of 200,000 hectares - 20 times the legal limit - acquired secretly by Pheapimex, an ethnic-Chinese owned Cambodian conglomerate with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Pheapimex formed a joint venture with China's Wuzhishan plantation firm to exploit the region, displacing indigenous minority people who rely on the forests for their traditional livelihoods.
Global Witness said bigger deals involving Chinese state-backed companies were likely the least transparent and the most strongly defended by government security forces, who responded with military force to anti-logging protests by villagers in Mondulkiri.
"From the perspective of people in Cambodia who might want to ask questions about the process ... it's even more difficult with some of these recent deals that have totally been brokered behind closed doors," Taylor said.
He said the outcome of such deals for people living in rural areas was disastrous. "They know nothing until the moment that the bulldozers turn up and start pushing down their houses."
Loans, grants from Beijing
"If they protest, they get the full force of the state mechanism ... suppressing their efforts to get their voices heard," he added.
Hun Sen has banned illegal logging and called anarchic logging "the biggest mistake" of his political career, and his views have been backed up by anti-logging speeches by ministers, but with little apparent effect.
Chan Sophal said China's interests in Cambodia were clear. "They help us, but they also look into the resources we have, such as mines, oil, gold, iron, and land. They need land to grow agricultural and agro-industrial crops to meet the demands of the [China's] population."
Difficult history
Sino-Khmer relations began in 1958. During the 1970s, Maoist China for Pol Pot gave steadfast support to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, whose faction is blamed for deaths of more than a million people.
Closer ties developed after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 through former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, who maintained a second home in China and close ties with Beijing.
China wrote off significant loans to the Cambodian government six years ago, making new loans and grants worth $600 million during the visit to Cambodia of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in April 2006.
While no conditions were attached, analysts say Beijing is keen to secure access to the southern port of Sihanoukville for strategic reasons, particularly as a delivery point for imported oil.
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
11 parties finally approved to join parliamentary election of Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The National Election Committee (NEC) of Cambodia confirmed that 11 out of the 12 political parties applying to join the general election on July 27 are eligible to vie for seats at the National Assembly, said a press release received Wednesday.
NEC made the ultimate decision, after the Constitutional Council inspected and rejected the application of the Khmer Popular Society Party, said the committee in its release.
Earlier last week, NEC preliminarily denied the party's application and sent its document to the council for further inspection.
The approved participants included the major ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the co-ruling Funcinpec Party, the royalist Norodom Ranariddh Party, as well as the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and Human Rights Party.
During the previous general election in 2003, 23 political parties vied with each other for the 123 seats in the Cambodian National Assembly. In that year, CPP led by Prime Minister Hun Senwon 73 seats, Funcinpec 26 seats, and SRP 24 seats.
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Vietnam reports "UFO" explosion off Cambodia coast
HANOI (Reuters) - An unidentified flying object exploded in mid-air over a southern Vietnamese island, state media said on Wednesday, a day after Cambodia's air force retracted a report of a mysterious plane crash.
The Vietnam News Agency said residents of Phu Quoc island, 10 km (6 miles) off the coast of the Cambodian province of Kampot, found shards of grey metal, including one 1.5 meters (1.5 yards) long.
"The explosion happened at about 8 km (5 miles) above the ground, and perhaps it was a plane, but authorities could not identify whether it was a civil or military aircraft," VNA said in a report headlined "UFO explodes over Phu Quoc Island."
Soldiers were sent out to look for wreckage and survivors, and local authorities contacted airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but received no reports of missing aircraft, the official state news agency added.
Villagers in Kampot said on Tuesday that they had heard a loud explosion. On Wednesday they told Reuters they had found small chunks of metal near the coastline.
Kung Mony, deputy commander of Cambodia's Air Force, said on Tuesday he had been told of a foreign plane crashing in Kampot province, but later backed off his claims of an aircraft accident.
(Writing by Grant McCool and Ed Cropley in Bangkok; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
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